In Every Darkness
Chapter Fifty One: Not Nice, Spying
18.9.1996
"Tatsu, there is an opening for a position on the schools board of Governors, after your brother was sacked several years back – no one else seemed to feel to eager to take up the position," Dumbledore smiled.
Tatsu blinked, taking a half step back. "Hang on a second here Albus! I've just taken guardianship of my friends son, and my other friends godson, who happens to be a student at your school, but that doesn't mean that I'm ready to step up my activities in the magical world that much!"
Dumbledore laughed. "I wasn't expecting you to accept," he remarked, eyes twinkling. "But the offer stands, should you wish to change your mind. You would provide the school with a breath of fresh air, should ever change your mind."
"Thank you, Albus. I shall, of course, put some thought to your offer. Don't expect a reply before Christmas though," Tatsu smiled. "Come on Harry, lets get down to the Great Hall – it's about lunch time now, and I'm hungry."
"I will let you go on ahead," Dumbledore said. "I've got a few things to do here before I leave, unfortunately. I will join you later."
"See you soon," Harry replied over his shoulder.
Harry knew for a fact that Malfoy always ate lunch in the hall – to gossip with the other Slytherins about various things that had happened to him. "Race you?" Harry offered his new guardian.
Tatsu grinned. "You're on!" the pair of them bolted immediately, pacing swiftly along the hallway. Harry, of course, was at the definite advantage, being familiar with the castle.
The entrance hall was coming up, Harry hurtled for the stairway, Tatsu was about ten paces behind him, the doors were open and the entire school was watching in amazement.
Just as Harry reached the bottom of the stairs, Tatsu leapt over the top of the railings, tumbling easily down to land on the ground and start running again. He and Harry burst through the doors at the exact same moment.
"Cheater," Harry remarked, glaring at Tatsu, who just grinned at him.
The rest of the school was gaping at this odd man. Who was he? Was he a good guy? Of course he was! He was with Harry Potter, wasn't he? Whispers ran across the Great Hall.
"Hey Tatsu," Harry's voice was too low for other people to hear him. "I forgot to ask this morning – I'm doing to a Defence Against the Dark Arts project, the subject is a person who helped fighting against the Dark Lord last time, and the subjects were chosen randomly. I got you – Malfoy got me! – and I was wondering if you could give me a hand?"
"Of course, I am your guardian, it's fitting that I help you with your homework," Tatsu murmured in reply, then looked up with a faint smile.
Harry did the same, and saw McGonagall walking towards him and Tatsu. "Sir, visitors are not usually allowed into the school, at least, not without prior notice," she said, looking at Tatsu.
Harry saw, out of the corner of his eye, that the Slytherins were leaning forwards, hoping that Harry would get into trouble, along with this new man.
"These are … special circumstances, I believe. Albus invited me here after we'd been to the Ministry of Magic, I am now Harry's guardian, as all his blood relatives are dead. You, I presume, would be Minerva McGonagall," he bowed slightly, "my name is Kendo Tatsu, or Tatsu Kendo, in English."
Whispers ran through those of the hall who'd grown up among magical people, and everyone in seventh year. Harry figured that they learnt about the war against Voldemort in History of Magic at some point.
"Tatsu Kendo! Well, you are more than welcome here!" McGonagall stepped back slightly with a bright smile. "Both in your own right, and as a guest of Albus. Come in, come in."
She stepped back. "Will you eat at the staff table?"
Tatsu smiled and rested a hand on Harry's shoulder. "No, I'll eat with Harry, though thank you for the offer."
He and Harry headed across the Great Hall to the Gryffindor Table. The eyes of the students followed them every step of the way, but Harry was getting fairly used to this now.
"Harry! Tatsu!" Ron and Hermione called out greetings from their seats on the table. "How are you?"
Harry and his new guardian settled on either side of the other two. "Pretty good," Tatsu muttered, and Harry nodded, a little slowly.
"We'll explain later," he murmured softly to his friends, before turning to the food. He was hungry, he realised quickly. The morning in court had made him hungrier than he'd realised.
"Tatsu, could you explain the process that you have to through to become someone's magical guardian?" Hermione asked a few seconds later. "Books don't really say much about it."
Harry listened with half an ear, more interested in food, as he had just gone through with a magical adoption a few short minutes ago.
Soon enough, lunch was over and Harry led his friends to the Library. "Malfoy follows," Grypis murmured in Harry's mind. "He is intrigued, I think, by Tatsu. Perhaps he is seeking information to give to his master. I think it relatively safe to assume that he has turned to Lord Voldemort's side. His emotions are dark. So dark."
"You are worried," Harry thought back. "He cannot harm me here – he has tried, and failed, for the past five years. Now Tatsu is here too, and I am finally learning to properly defend myself. He will have less of a chance than he did before."
"Still, I am worried about it. I cannot tell why … Perhaps it will become clearer as I grow older and my powers become more fine tuned. Ah! We are nearly at the library!"
Harry was startled to find that Grypis was right – they were indeed nearly at the Library. "Malfoy still follows?" He asked.
"Yes," was the murmured reply.
"Malfoy's
following us," Harry muttered to his friends. "He won't get close enough to
over hear us for a while – I don't think he wants to risk us seeing him for a
bit. We'll get the important stuff over and done with before then."
"How do you know?" Hermione asked, surprised.
"I saw him, out of the corner of my eye," Harry lied easily. He hated to lie, but for the moment, he didn't want to risk the truth about Grypis getting out to the entire school – especially not Malfoy.
"So what happened at court?" Hermione asked, sounding exited.
Harry began to tell the tale, with Tatsu butting in with muttered comments on occasion. Both Harry and his guardian were keeping a look out for Malfoy's approach.
"He's behind that bookcase now," Grypis said, the first one to hear anything from Malfoy.
"Behind that bookcase," Harry murmured, indicating the said bookcase, his movements so small that none bar Tatsu would recognise them for what it was.
Tatsu concentrated for a moment. "Yes, he's there," the man said after a while. "I can hear his breathing. He's trying to keep quiet. As Malfoy is the only one that would be likely to be following us, I'll assume that it is him."
"Like there was any doubt," Grypis muttered. "I knew I was right."
"I knew too," Harry assured the griffin. "But humans have to test things out for themselves."
He heard Grypis sigh.
"Well, that's just about everything from this morning," Harry announced, his voice a little louder than before, so that Malfoy would be able to hear him.
"Sounds like you had it worse than History of Magic," Ron added, his voice about the same pitch as Harry's.
"How can you say that Ron? It must have been very educational!" Hermione protested.
"A bit of both, I think," Tatsu interupted, breaking up the argument before it could get out of hand.
Ron and Hermione glared at each other for a moment, then shrugged and left the argument to lie. "There are so many books here," Tatsu remarked, looking around the library. He stood up and walked off in the opposite direction to Malfoy.
"He'll double back," Harry murmured, his voice almost inaudible. "Don't get lost," he called quietly after his guardian.
"So are you going to be living at Tatsu's house from now on?" Hermione asked, making small talk to keep Malfoy's attention on them, but she wanted to know the answer anyway.
"I'm not sure. It's safer at Hogwarts," Harry replied. "So I might stay here more often than I do there, but I'll most likely go back to his place sometime."
"He'll only need to be your guardian until next July," Ron pointed out. "After that, you can go wherever you want to, because you'll be of age."
"Yeah," Harry agreed. "It's just lucky that he moved in next door, otherwise I still wouldn't have a guardian."
Suddenly there was a yelp from behind them, and the three Gryffindors turned to see Tatsu walk out from behind the bookshelf, a struggling Draco Malfoy held fast in his grip.
"Spying isn't nice, Mr. Malfoy," Tatsu admonished sternly. "Though I shouldn't expect any less from Death Eater's son, I suppose… Or anyone from the Malfoy family."
"Are you insulting my family?" Malfoy's pale eyes were suddenly furious.
"What does it sound like?" Tatsu demanded with a sneer. "Took you a while to realise it!"
Malfoy glared, not knowing what to say for a moment. This was a man, a fully grown wizard who would know perfectly well how to use a wand.
He wasn't stupid enough to try and attack a fully fledged wizard – that would be suicide, as he knew from duelling practices with his father.
"Wait until the teachers hear that you've been manhandling a student," he sneered, with as much arrogance and surety in his voice as he could muster.
"That won't work, Malfoy," Tatsu warned coolly. "You heard in the hall that I am Tatsu Kendo, a hero of the last war against Voldemort. Who do you think that the teachers are going to believe? You, a boy who's father is a Death Eater, who, just last year, supported Umbridge, who none of the teachers actually liked, or me?"
Malfoy glared furiously, knowing that nothing he could say from now on would help anything. Severus Snape was gone – if he had been here still, Malfoy would have gone to him. Snape always listened to him.
"You came without anyone to hide behind," Harry remarked coldly. "How's it feel to be all alone without your goons to help you?"
Malfoy glared, but didn't answer. In truth, he was scared. He should never have told Crabbe and Goyle not to come with him. He'd thought that they would make too much noise. He hadn't considered that they might be useful.
"Scram, Malfoy," Tatsu advised. "If I hear you've been annoying Harry and his friends, it'll be all the worse for you."
Malfoy fled.
"Come on then Harry, we'll go the Room of Requirement for your training," Tatsu said. "You can do some of your homework later – keeping fit will mean the difference between life and death."
Harry sighed and waved goodbye to his friends.
That night, once his training with Tatsu had finished, Harry lay in his bed in the Gryffindor boys dormitory. He was tired. Completely worn out. Training with Tatsu did that to a person.
He sank swiftly in a deep and restful sleep, wondering if Sirius would come to him that night. Harry was not expecting what would happen that night.
***
Well, couldn't NOT leave a cliffie could I? Next chapter will be out sooner, I hope.
My apologies for the lateness of this one – I had quite a bit of homework to get through, unfortunately, and I was out for a while too … Oh well, I'll try and keep up this week, but I can't promise anything, I've got a bout of tests coming up.
VOTE RESULTS: About nineteen people voted to keep the review chapter, and only thirteen to put the thanks back at the bottom of the page, therefore the review page will be remaining. Thanks to everyone who voted.
~WolfMoon~